1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to rescue or evacuation devices for non-ambulatory or bedridden persons, and more particularly to an inexpensive, multi-use, storable evacuation bed that can be used to rapidly evacuate patients from a structure in an emergency and can then be used as a temporary bed to provide post-evacuation surge capacity.
2. Background and Related Art
Several attempts have been made to provide evacuation methods and systems that can be used at facilities such as rest homes, assisted living facilities, hospitals, and other multi-level facilities like hotels, motels, and large business buildings or complexes, among other locations. In these locations, sometimes large numbers of individuals must be evacuated in short periods of time in cases of emergency. Many times, a large percentage of individuals in these facilities who need evacuation are unable to walk and leave the facility under their own power. This may be due to the reason the persons are in the facility originally, or may be due to injuries sustained in the course of the emergency necessitating evacuation.
In recent years, with the increase in awareness of preparedness issues, including those surrounding the possibility of terrorist attack, more of these facilities have sought to improve their preparedness for such events. However, no method has been provided that adequately addresses all of the needs of these types of facilities on encountering an emergency. For example, a hospital seeking to evacuate patients might have a patient-to-staff ratio of five-to-one. A nursing home or other similar facility often has a patient-to-staff ratio approaching ten-to-one. In emergencies, staff members may become injured or abandon their duties, further exacerbating the patient-to-staff ratio. Therefore, any method for evacuation must be rapid and ideally should permit evacuation on a low rescuer-to-evacuee ratio.
In fires or an earthquake, debris often clogs hallways and elevators become unusable. To deal with this situation, an effective evacuation system must be able to traverse nearly any kind of terrain, and must be able to descend or even ascend stairways. In part because of the need to cover varying kinds of terrain and to facilitate evacuation with as few staff as possible, an evacuation mechanism should ideally be lightweight and maneuverable. An evacuation device should also roll or slide easily on most types of terrain to allow as few people as possible to transport an evacuee in most situations.
Many patients being evacuated have special needs. Sometimes patients have broken bones or other injuries that require protection from jostling, or have spinal or other injuries where too much flexibility in the evacuation device could cause further injury or unnecessary pain. To prevent this, an ideal evacuation device should be strong and reasonably rigid, and should protect the evacuee from rough contact with the evacuation environment as much as possible. At the extreme end of patient needs are those patients with severe injuries requiring persistent intensive care to prevent the patients' death. An effective evacuation device should permit such care to continue unabated during and after an evacuation so that any type of patient may be evacuated.
Potential evacuees come in all shapes and sizes, so an evacuation device should be acceptable for use with a broad range of patients. This becomes especially important as a patient is transported up or down stairs. Thus the evacuation device should be flexible in its use. Of course, hospitals and other facilities that need to provide for the possibility of rapid evacuation hope never to have to perform an evacuation and hope never to use their evacuation devices. Since it is anticipated that the devices will be used rarely if ever, an ideal device should be relatively inexpensive to manufacture and purchase.
Also because evacuation devices are only rarely used, they should be readily stored in a manner that does not consume expensive storage space. The storage should ideally occur in an accessible place that is close to the location where the evacuation mechanism will eventually be used. Thus the evacuation device should store in a compact manner in a location that is readily accessible and close to potential evacuees.
Many times, successful evacuation is not the end of the story. In a serious emergency where a hospital facility is damaged, for example, evacuation of the patients from the hospital is merely the first step. In an emergency such as an earthquake, the patients will likely have to be cared for at whatever location to which they have been evacuated, which might be the grounds outside the hospital. In addition, in a serious emergency, hundreds or thousands of additional patients might be arriving for treatment, besides those being evacuated. Therefore, an ideal evacuation device should be able to double as a temporary bed to provide surge capacity for patients, both evacuees and new patients, until a more permanent solution to the emergency capacity needs can be devised.